Swiftcurrent Creek all of my holy

Unlike Fox, Jinx had allowed nobody near her in the aftermath of the cougar attack. Ira had come the closest, but she viewed him with a level of affection she reserved for no other. Despite her best effprts, she had been unable to prevent herself from developing a relationship with the young Red Keep prince. She had no doubt in her mind that the boy still viewed her with inherent distrust. She didn't hold this illusion against him, if only because she knew he would one day acknowledge that she had helped him.

Any other wolf that came near her, she warned away. She had taken to wandering through the wooded part of the Creek like a spectre, staring from a distance at the wolves present but never getting close. If they started in her direction, she was quick to turn and walk away. Jinx still wore the weight of her pregnancy, for it would take a few weeks to work it off... But her stomach was hollow, bereft of the children she might have given to Sos.

The regret that clutched at her most often wasn't that her children had never been born, but that she hadn't appeased Sos. The Dark Bear hadn't come to her yet, but she didn't doubt His wrath when He did. Part of the reason she wandered in isolation so much in the aftermath of her miscarriage linked to her fear that Sos would find her. He would kill her, and any other with her, or he would command her to kill her companions. Although she would never say it aloud, Jinx had no desire to bring down her pack mates, even though she felt it was their fault she had lost her pups in the first place.

It was her intention to wander again today, always in eerie silence brought on by a combination of grief and anger. Fox thwarted her plan early on, however, for Jinx had chosen to haunt the creekside that morning. She walked along it in something of a stupor, and before long found herself almost face-to-face with her leader. Though her initial anger at Fox challenging a mountain lion had faded and left room for emptiness to take its place, the Gamma stiffened nonetheless. She had no words for Fox at that moment, and wasn't ready to face what had occurred (nor the relief the young Alpha likely felt). Nor could she turn away. She was held in thrall by the very laws of wolf that made them all follow their Alphas with utmost devotion, but she was speechless.